The ENTHRONE project

End-to-End QoS through Integrated Management of Content, Networks and Terminals

The ENTHRONE project

A key element for the successful mass market provision of audio-visual
services that will produce revenues for the content/service providers
and network operators is an integrated management solution based on the
end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) over heterogeneous networks and
terminals. Content providers wish to have guarantees that their content
will reach customers with high quality and in a timely and secure
manner. However, no complete and unified solution that enables the
end-to-end delivery of services over various different types of networks
at a guaranteed quality level exists today.

The ENTHRONE project is led by Professor George Pavlou in the Department
of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and is funded by the EU. It
proposes an integrated management solution that covers the entire
audio-visual service distribution chain, including protected content
handling, distribution across different types of wired and wireless
networks and reception at disparate user terminals. The aim is not to
unify or impose a strategy on each individual entity of the chain, but
to harmonise their functionality, in order to support an end-to-end
Quality of Service (QoS) architecture over heterogeneous networks,
applied to a variety of audio-visual services that are delivered to
disparate user terminals. In order to meet its objectives, the project
is relying on an open distributed management architecture for the
end-to-end delivery chain. The MPEG-21 data model is used to provide the
common support for implementing and managing the multimedia resources.